THOMAS PAINE 




CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 



NEW ROCHELLE 
June 5, 1909 



THOMAS PAINE CHRONOLOGY 

1737. Jan. 29.— Thomas Paine born at Thetford, England. 

1774. Nov. 30.— Came to America, with letters from Benjamin Franklin. 

1775. March 8.— Paine's first essay in Penn. Magazine on Anti-slavery. (Later 

essays on Peace by International Arbitration, Protection 
of Animals, Justice for Women, etc.) 

1775. Oct. 18.— Propounds "A Serious Thought" — The first suggestion of 

American Independence. 
177G. Jan. 10. —Published "Common Sense" — a call for separation. ("Sound 
doctrine and unanswerable reasoning " — Geo. Wash- 
ington.) 

1776. Sept. 19. — Enlisted under Gen. Greene, and wrote ' ' The Crisis "— 

turning the tide from despair to hope. 

1777. Jan. 13.— Second Crisis, saying, "The United States of America" 

sounds as well as "The Kingdom of Great Britain." 

1779. Nov. 2.— Elected Secretary of Pennsylvania Assembly. 

1780. March 1. — Act abolishing slavery in Pennsylvania. (Paine's work.) 
1780. June 8.— Paine leads subscription for Washington's starving army with 

$500— leading to total of $1,500,000— again averting 
disaster. 

1780. July 4. — University of Pennsylvania confers A. M. on Paine. 

1781. Feb. to —Paine visited France and obtained large royal loan— (Paine's 

Aug. plan and work — no recompense. ) 

1784. June 16.— New York State presented Paine a farm in New Rochelle— 
277 acres. 

1784. Oct. 3. — Congress votes $3,000 to Paine for services in " timely publi- 

cations." 

1785. — Philosophical Society made Paine a member. 

1787. April —Visited France, and England, introducing first model of iron 
bridge, and — "The Parliament of man and federation 
^of the world"— (Paine's plan for "universal peace.") 

1791. March 13. — Rights of Man, 1st part .published in London. 

1792. Feb. 17.— Rights of Man, 2d part published in London. 

1792. Dec. 18. — Paine convicted of ' 'High Treason " — outlawed from England. 

1793. Jan. 18.— Paine strove to save life of Louis XVI. (fails). 
1802. Oct. 30. — Paine returned to America — after 15 years' absence. 

1809. Feb. 1. — A committee of Congress reported "That Mr. Paine rendered 
great and eminent services to the United States during 
their struggle for liberty and independence." 

1809. June 8.— Paine died at 59 Grove Street, New York City. 

1819. Sept. — Wm. Cobbett took Paine's remains to England. 

1*39. Nov. 12. — Monument erected near the grave. 

1875. — Portrait of Paine accepted for Independence Hall, Phila- 

delphia, Pa. 

1881. May 30. — New Rochelle monument repaired and rededicated. 

1899. May 30. — Bronze bust unveiled with ceremonies. 

1905. Sept. 11.— Marble bust of Paine (by Morse) accepted for Independence 
Hall. 

1905. Oct. 13.— New Rochelle memorial committed to the custodv of the Citv. 






\Wvoi-,, Ma 






MEMORIAL CELEBRATION 



OF THE 



ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 



OF THE DEATH OF 



THO MAS]] P AINE 

AT THE 

PAINE MONUMENT 

PAINE AVENUE AND NORTH STREET, NEW ROCHELLE, N. Y. 

Saturday, June 5 th, 1909, 2 p. m. 



PROF. THADDEUS B. WAKEMAN 

PRESIDENT THOMAS PAINE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, PRESIDING 



ThelAUcJr esses s 

Thomas Paine as the Devotee of Liberty 

By REV. THOMAS R. SLICER 

Pastor All Souls' Unitarian Church, N. Y. 

Paine as a Prophet of Democracy 

By DAVIS SAVILLE MUZZEY, Ph. D. 

Society for Ethical Culture 

Paine, the Pioneer of International Peace 

By PROF. THADDEUS BURR WAKEMAN 

President Thomas Paine Historical Association 

Paine, the Apostle of Universal Brotherhood 

By ELBERT HUBBARD 

Editor of "The Philistine" 

Also HENRY ROWLEY'S speech before the Brooklyn Philosophical Society 



THE CELEBRATION UNDER THE ^AUSPICES OF THE 

THOMAS PAINE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION 
PAINE MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION 

BROOKLYN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION 
SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL CULTURE 

HUGUENOT ASSOCIATION OF NEW ROCHELLE 



Copies of this pamphlet obtainable from Paine Historical Association, 1 20 Lexington Avenue, 

New York 



&& 

V 



Announcement 

The Thomas Paine National Historical Association 
was organized and incorporated (under the laws of 
New York) on Sept. n, 1906. Its first president was 
Rev. Moncure D. Conway, and soon after his death, 
in 1907, Prof. T. B. Wakeman was elected president. 
Its object is to collect and preserve relics of Paine, 
and books contributing facts about Paine to increase 
the public's knowledge and appreciation of the value 
of Paine's works, by meetings and publications. With 
as yet very moderate membership. and financial sup- 
port, the society has to its credit two very successful 
meetings at New Rochelle, one held in October, 1905, 
and the last on June 5, 1909. (As a centenary of Paine's 
death, June 8, 1809.) A report of the first meeting will 
be given in another pamphlet, this one being devoted 
to the proceedings of the centennial memorial. The 
report was made for and printed in The Truth 
Seeker, to which the society is indebted for the op- 
portunity to use its linotypes in the making of this 
pamphlet. The liberality of a "handful" of Paine's best 
friends of to-day makes possible the printing of these 
reports, and the beginning of a very small Paine Mu- 
seum at the old Paine house in New Rochelle. That 
house is owned by the Huguenot Association of New 
Rochelle, and that society deserves our thanks for 
having allotted one room for the use of this Paine 
Association. The fact is that very few material relics 
of Paine can be found, being as scarce and difficult 
to discover as his lost bones. This is not surprising 
when bearing in mind the fact that he was generally 
contented to live where "$5.00 would have bought the 
furniture." But his "soul goes marching on" in his 
books, and fortunately we can collect these and others 
throwing side lights on his history. The Paine As- 
sociation can and will make the New Rochelle Paine 
Museum a receptacle for Paine history, facts, works, 
etc., which should be useful to those in search of such 
knowledge; and the association will disseminate Paine's 
grand political and social principles just so far as 
may be made possible by increasing membership and 
generous subscriptions. 

All who favor these acts and purposes of the Thomas 
Paine National Historical Association are earnestly 
invited to contribute whatever they can spare to aid — 
books, pamphlets, clippings (for the scrap-book) and 
checks or cash to make the wheels go round on the 
press that prints Paine's pamphlets. Correspondence 
to this end may be addressed to the society at 120 
Lexington Avenue, New York. 



The Paine Centenary 

[From the New York Truth Seeker, June 12, 1909] 

The improved position of the Paine monument at 
New Rochelle is material and visible proof of the 
rise of Paine himself in public esteem. The con- 
trast as regards the monument is shown in two 
pictures The Truth Seeker has printed this week. 
The monument was erected seventy years ago in the 
corner of a field at the intersection of a country 
road and a lane. Today it has been elevated to a 
place where two avenues meet, with broad drives 
on three sides of it. The improvement of the site 
has involved a vast amount of filling in, and the old 
trees that shaded and half hid the monument have 
been preserved by circular retaining walls about 
their trunks. The old Paine house stands in a 
park by a walled brook that feeds a pretty lake with 
a pergola (or is it a peristyle?) at the lower 
end. The little company who journeyed to New 
Rochelle a hundred years ago to bury Paine would 
think themselves in a strange country. 

On the afternoon of Saturday, June 5, Free- 
thinkers from New York and the surrounding 
country as far west as Chicago gathered there in 
hundreds to assist in the exercises commemorative 
of the centenary of Paine's death, which occurred 
June 8, 1809. The weather was unpropitious, or 
there would have been as many more. A north- 
east storm prevailed on Friday, and threatened to 
continue on Saturday, and there was no encourage- 
ment in the outlook to hope for better things. To 
the credit of the skies it is to be said that they with- 
held their moisture admirably, conscious, doubtless, 
that the speeches would not need it, and while there 
was throughout the afternoon a tentative and uncer- 
tain raising and lowering of umbrellas, nobody real- 
ly got wet. 



Down Paine avenue, off North avenue, to the rear 
of the monument, a roomy and trustworthy speak- 
er's stand had been erected by the committee and 
inclosed with the American colors. The small 
buildings shown in a picture of Colonel Ingersoll at 
New Rochelle which was given last week have been 
removed. A hundred seats or so were reserved for 
women and their escorts, and others were placed on 
the curb. Before occupying these the company in 
large numbers inspected the Paine house and reg- 
istered their names as visitors. The members of 
the Ingersoll family were present. Mr. W. E. 
Clark, secretary of the Independent Religious So- 
ciety of Chicago, represented Mr. Mangasarian's 
congregation. Mr. Geo. O. Roberts, president of 
the Buckeye Secular Union, came from Dennison r 
Ohio; Mr. A. Nielen from Cincinnati; Mr. 
S. M. Smith from Middletown, New York, 
Members of the Brooklyn society sent a floraJ 
wreath and were out in force. Young Mr. Win- 
ham, of that suburb, trafficked in souvenir badges 
and supplied everybody with a souvenir program 
prepared by the committee. Henry Rowley, in his 
automobile clothes, looked prosperous and robust. 
Dr. P'oote, similarly accoutered, kept an eye on the 
arrangements, which were a credit to his oversight. 
Theodore Schroeder, who is a farmer and a neigh- 
bor of Mr. Wakeman, was picturesque in khaki. 
Mr. W. M. van der Weyde scaled all eminences with 
his camera and tripod and photographed industri- 
ously. E. C. Walker was accompanied by his daugh- 
ter, Virna, now a young lady, and there were other 
rosebuds. Alden Freeman, of East Orange, who 
has been turned out by the Orange Chapter Sons of 
American Revolution for his heresies, and who 
managed a Paine celebration in his town on the 8th, 
bought numerous copies of The Truth Seeker to 
give to his friends. Fra Elhertus, John Hubbard, 
drew little knots of people wherever he stayed his 
course. From the Fra's personal appearance, 
which is a trifle singular, a stranger would find him 
hard to classify. He might turn out to be a pro- 



gressive Quaker or a poet or a benevolent Pawnee 
Indian, and he might offer one a poem or a sermon 
or a bottle of Pawnee Remedy. As it happens, he 
is an entertainer of rare gifts. The Rev. Dr. Sheer 
looks not at all like a parson and very much like 
a bank president. Dr. Muzzey, of the Society for 
Ethical Culture, would pass for the leader of a 
men's Bible class, but his speech bewrays him. 

Dr. Slicer, Dr. Muzzey, and Fra Elbertus were 
the speakers; Dr. Wakeman, as president of the 
Paine Historical Association, presiding. At a little 
after 2 o'clock, with the curb lined with spectators, 
with the seats in front of the stand all filled, with 
the chug-chug wagons at rest, and an expectant 
crowd extending from the seats to the monument, 
Mr. Wakeman called the assemblage to order and 
the exercises were on. The Huguenots, with less 
faith in the weather clerk than the Freethinkers 
displayed, postponed the celebration of the landing 
of their forefathers at New Rochelle. 

What follows is from the pen and stenographic 
notes of our very helpful friend, Mr. Llewellyn D. 
Crine, of this city. 

The following named societies joined in revering 
the memory of Paine: 

Thomas Paine Historical Association. 

Paine Memorial Association. 

Brooklyn Philosophical Association. 

Society for Ethical Culture. 

Chairman Wakeman said: 

Ladies and Gentlemen: The time has come to 
commence our celebration of the one hundredth 
death date, or properly speaking, harvest date of the 
living career of Thomas Paine. You are all here 
with expectancy of having a pleasant day doubtless, 
and we shall make it so by the enlightenment and 
the sense of justice that will be spread abroad and 
remain with us as a result of this occasion. You 
are beginning now to get acquainted with the beauty 
of the scenery of this position; you know that is 
the real house in which Paine lived as a farmer 
after his return to this country from Europe. It 



was moved clown here from the summit of the hill 
so as to have together all of the obtainable Paine 
relics. The monument, and place where his grave 
was under the tree near the fence there, and this 
stream and house combine to make this the proper 
place for this commemoration to be held. I think 
the program giving a chronology of dates will afford 
you all the further information that will be neces- 
sary for you to remember the day, and I believe the 
inspiration and pleasure which we will all derive 
from meeting here will be lasting. The first speak- 
er that will open the commemoration for us is the 
Rev. Dr. Thomas R. Sheer, and I take pleasure in 
introducing him because of what the man really is, 
and because in addition to that he shows a spirit 
of reconciliation which is coming over the religious 
section of the country in the fact that we can hardly 
now have one celebration without at least one rep- 
resentative of the clergy to express appreciation of 
one whom they have heretofore deemed their enemy, 
or one who is beyond or outside of the notice, of 
the great religious section which he represents. 

SPEECH OF DR. SLICER. 

Dr. Sheer said in part : Ladies and Gentlemen : I 
am impressed with the contrast which this group 
of people represents when set against the back- 
ground of one hundred years ago and the little 
group that surrounded the grave in which Thomas 
Paine was laid. One of the Hicks family, who was 
destined on the lines of real religion to make a new 
departure in the Society of Friends, was there. 
Madame Bonneville, who was bound to Paine by the 
sacrament of friendship, and two negroes that walk- 
ed twenty-five miles to be there to represent the 
emancipation not yet achieved but destined to arrive, 
were in the group. Here, amid this downfall from 
on high a larger group of people celebrate that 
downfall from on high expressed in words, "Let the 
world take notice when a man is born into the 
world." 

8 



I am here not to represent the Christian church, 
but to represent religion reduced to its lowest terms. 
There are only two words in religion, God and the 
soul, and all other things called religious are an 
effort to build a bridge from one of these facts 
to the other. Paine did not emphasize the 
bridge so much as he did the flight from one 
to the other, which was due to his being a man of 
courage and possessed of a spirit of adventure. It 
is natural that a man who believed as Paine did, 
that essential religion consists in love of God and 
love of man, should have been in matters of govern- 
ment and religion a devotee of liberty. 

As you know, the republics of Paine now encircle 
practically the whole world. At the meeting the 
last time of the Geographical Society at Washing- 
ton, the question was asked, What was the greatest 
benefit to the human race achieved since the settle- 
ment of America? And it was said, the organiza- 
tion of republics in imitation of the United States, 
Now, Paine's title as the discoverer and inventor 
of the United States is just as plain as Watts' in- 
vention of the steam engine, and everything that 
has taken place as a result of organizing the Uni- - 
ted States of America was the result of Thomas 
Paine's labors. To him the credit! 

But where is the empire of Napoleon the Great? 
Nowhere, utterly gone, and the aristocracy of Great 
Britain is now trembling in the balance as to whether 
the people will permit it to continue any longer or 
not. The Maritime compact of Paine, Jefferson 
said, was perfectly practicable. There is no doubt/ 
about it that Paine's position as a world statesman;^, 
and as the great pioneer of the progress and peace of 
humanity, will be the great subject which will 
occupy the attention of our successors, and especial- 
ly of those who will hold on this spot in 2009 the 
next celebration and memorial of the Father of 
Republics and so of the peace of the world. 

"Only the other night," continued Dr. Sheer, "in a 
group of authors one man was telling what he 
thought to be the effect of capital punishment, and 

9 



one man said, 'We do not hang one where we ought 
to hang ten,' then he illustrated it by saying in your 
garden you pull out the weeds that the flowers may 
grow. I expressed to him the trouble with our 
garden is it is all flowers; there are no weeds. He 
was ready to dispute that and I reminded him of 
the brotherhood in ideal, and I said there is no herb 
in the practice of medicine, there is no flower in 
the garden, but that sometime or other somebody 
called it a weed; that all of our herbs are converted 
weeds and all of our flowers are converted weeds. 
Paine's idea of liberty was that every man had 
right to enjoyment of life, liberty and happiness, 
and it was for that reason he was intimately asso- 
ciated with the Declaration of Independence, which 
was long a declaration before it was a fact." At 
this point a "coughing instrument" with lungs in 
the form of automobile machinery, standing at the 
rear of the platform, disturbed the speaker and 
after a few further reflections, the address closed 
with the words, "The progress of the world in po- 
litical and religious liberty will be written in the 
estimates that the world has learned to take of 
Thomas Paine during the hundred years since he 
fell into an unnoticed grave." 

SPEECH OF DR. MUZZEY. 

The next speaker was Dr. Muzzey, who said : 
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Many 
words have passed into the language of history 
which still belong largely to the sphere of prophecy, 
and democracy is such a word. We speak very 
glibly of democracy, of the winning of democracy. 
We talk of the great struggle of the 17th century 
of the Stuart kings and their parliaments as win- 
ning democratic government for England ; we point 
to the American and French revolutions as the pull- 
ing down of despotism in the world; and we point 
with pride to our extended suffrage, to our elected 
executive, to our popular courts and juries, and say 
the day of democracy has arrived, that absolutism 

10 



has passed away, tyrants are all overthrown. It is 
true that outward forms of despotism have largely 
passed away; that despotism, malevolent and ben- 
evolent, is no longer very evident in the world; 
that the form of advanced human life today is 
largely democratic. But it needs only the slightest 
glance at our conditions, social, political and relig- 
ious, it needs only a glance at the intrenchments of 
accumulated wealth, it needs only the horrid spec- 
tacle of the nations vieing in frenzy to arm them- 
selves against each other for warfare, inventing 
•engines of destruction at the cost of the toil of mil- 
lions of men on the farms, in the shops, yes, of the 
women in the homes, in the office, in the sweat 
shops — it needs only a glance at these things, the 
thought of them, the sight of them, to make us 
realize that the democracy for which Robert Burns 
sang and for which Thomas Paine labored is still 
a bright ideal in the distant future, the star of 
"brotherhood over a humanity still in the cradle. 

Today, and only today, Thomas Paine is begin- 
ning to be appreciated as the prophet of that kind 
of democracy which means full human brotherhood. 
His fame will grow with the years. The marvelous 
services of his brain, of his pen, which was never 
dipped in the ink of malice or slander, of his won- 
derful devotion as a soldier, as a prophet of free- 
dom, a service which George Washington, as you 
well know, said was worth that probably of all other 
men, or worth more than that of any other man in 
hringing about our independence, is coming to be 
understood. As the realization of that service of 
Paine grows, it will loom larger and larger. And 
when the day of democracy shall have come, when 
the principles for which Paine stood shall have fully 
replaced the awful dogmas of the past, as they are 
slowly and surely replacing those dogmas, then he 
-will come to his own. 

There is something prophetic about all great 
souls; they are not for their age but for all time. 

Their task is never exhausted by the performance 
of it in their generation, nobly as they may do it, but 



ii 



the great souls always set the mark ahead for 
humanity; they set us standards, give us something 
to strive for. Shakespeare has written his won- 
derful plays, and in the history of the human soul 
as he depicts Hamlet, Ophelia, Cordelia and other 
characters, we feel that he is analyzing our own 
very spirits; that he is dealing with the loves and 
hates and fears that are struggling for mastery in 
our own souls. He is not absorbed in the pictures 
of the past, he is speaking for time, for eternity, 
and he is extremely great because of this prophetic 
quality of his work. Abraham Lincoln is living 
and is honored every year more and more as the 
snows melt from his grave, not so much because 
of what he did, although what he did was magnifi- 
cent, but because of what he believed his country- 
men of America could do. Great, why ? It was be- 
cause he was a prophetic soul that he was so ex- 
tremely great. And so Paine was not only a demo- 
crat, he was much greater, a prophet of democracy. 
Let me point out three or four things, the features 
of Paine's democracy that seem to me so valuable in 
their day for their prophetic quality. In the first 
place, the restless activity of his spirit : To Paine 
the idea of loyalty without activity was unthinkable. 
After his continuous service of eight years to the 
cause of the patriots in our war, a service which 
opened with the first number of the "Crisis" when 
the discouraged army was fleeing before the British 
across the fields of New Jersey, and closed reciting 
that the times that tried men's souls were over — 
after that wonderful service in which he was worth 
the efforts of twenty thousand men, he might have 
settled down in this country and enjoyed a good 
salary in a governmental position and lived a life 
of ease in a fine house; but no, he hastened away to 
England in order that he might carry on his work 
for freedom. He thought his work was finished 
here and himself no longer needed ; he left the copy- 
right of his eighteen pamphlets which were selling 
by the hundreds of thousands, and expressing satis- 
faction that he had been of use here, sailed away to 



12 



England. Edmund Burke had been hired to write 
a defense of monarchy with reference to the French 
Revolution when that movement was still in its 
noble and exalted stage. Paine immediately re- 
plied to Burke's attack on the revolution by tne 
"Rights of Man," a work which made the friends of 
monarchy tremble. For that, what was called his 
libel on monarchy and the monarch, for his attach- 
ment to the great souls who initiated the French 
revolution, Paine was marked for the hangman, 
but before the noose tightened about his neck, he 
was taken away to the field of his third activity for 
freedom. 

In France, the legislative assembly of 1792 elected 
a number of distinguished foreigners to citizen- 
ship : Priestley, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Washington, 
Hamilton, Madison, Kosciusko, the German Schil- 
ler, and Thomas Paine was among the number so 
elected. Paine was chosen a member of the French 
Assembly from Calais. There he labored to make 
this new republic of France an example for the 
monarchy-cursed countries of Europe. It was he 
with Sieyes that made the French constitution which 
was adopted next year. It was Paine who protest- 
ed against the domination of the assembly by the 
section of Paris which led to the reign of terror; it 
was he who stood unmoved in the frenzied assembly 
pleading for the life of Louis XVI, saying, I war 
against monarchy but not against Louis ; let us kill 
monarchy but not the man. 

For this he was cast into prison where he lan- 
guished for nearly a year by the sanguinary desire 
of Robespierre, and he finally escaped the guillotine 
only by his jailers being misled by a chalkmark that 
was placed on the inside of his cell door instead of 
the outside. 

I would call attention also to the fact which Dr. 
Sheer has touched on for a moment, that Paine was 
so sane in his democracy. He would not deceive 
by words. He saw nothing sacred in vocabularies. 
He brought every expression to the test of reason, 
to the test of present efficiency. When the members 

13 



of the Christian church and colleges in his day de- 
fended slavery on the ground that the Jewish 
scriptures sustain slavery, he accused them of hiding 
their cowardice behind the cowardice of the Israel- 
ites of two thousand years ago. When the timor- 
ous timeservers of monarchy asserted that the 
thrones of Europe at the close of the 18th century 
were the wisest forms of government on earth and 
should not be destroyed, he said mankind has gone 
so little way as yet in the discovery of forms of 
government that we cannot call it more than begun. 
When they told him that monarchy was sacred, he 
told them that was not reasonable ; that it would be 
just as reasonable to expect hereditary authors as 
to have hereditary rulers. When he was prosecuted 
for libel he replied : If to show the fraud and im- 
position of monarchy, if to propose reforms for the 
education of helpless infancy and for the relief and 
comfort of old age and the destitute, if to seek to 
stop the horrid practice of war among nations and 
bring about universal peace, commerce and brother- 
hood, if to strike off the shackles of superstition 
and raise man to his proper place in the universe — 
if these be libel, then let me live a libeler and let 
libeler be engraved on my tomb. 

You who have corresponded with the secretaries 
of these societies are familiar with the long list of 
reforms, social, political, religious, which were orig- 
inated by Thomas Paine. This list embraces almost 
everything which we prize in our accomplishments 
of the past hundred years as a nation. It was he 
who first suggested independence, the federal union, 
abolition of slavery, protection to dumb animals, in- 
ternational peace, and so on through the list. 
We still await the realization of many of his pro- 
posed reforms, among which is the federation of 
the world and the brotherhood of mankind, which 
must be brought about before universal democracy 
will be established on this earth. 

14 



SPEECH OF MR. WAKEMAN. 

The next address was by the chairman, Mr. 
Wakeman ; Mr. Winham being named to preside in 
the meantime.* His speech condensed was as fol- 
lows : 

You know back of me sits the principal charm 
of the day, and I do not mean to stand between 
you and him longer than necessary. This is an im- 
portant day to all of us because it is unique; we 
shall never see its return again and never attend 
another centenary celebration in memory and har- 
vest of Thomas Paine. We are here once for all. 
What influence we can extend to the next centenary 
day we must do by beginning it here and continue 
it as best we can until that centenary comes around. 
What has been said on religion was faithfully and 
well said. To me it was a sign of what Paine was 
worth sociologically ; in other words, of his influence 
on religion, morals, ethics, in the greater matter of 
social evolution and the law of human progress. 

If Paine was our real leader as to those services 
and subjects, he takes his place among the greatest 
benefactors of the human race, and what I am here 
to try to intimate to you I would like to do at 
length is this: That I have discovered that Paine 
not only wrote those words "the Religion of Hu- 
manity" in the VII Crisis, which nobody seemed 
to have found out until I called attention to them, 
but he was the real author by this discovery of all 
laws of social science, which is called sociology, now 
the queen of the sciences. And to this queen, all 



* As Mr. Wakeman will write his latest deductions 
about Paine, only fragments are given here. The 
rain and circumstances attending the celebration pre- 
vented the delivering and report of his address as pre- 
pared. Of that delivered but a part was reported — the 
latter part of the report by the stenographer gave sepa- 
rate sentences of the subjects touched upon. This 
change of subject is here intimated by separate para- 
graphs. The address as originally planned concludes 
the full report of the celebration, and will be had 
separately. 

15 



thinkers to-day are having their minds attracted as 
the final and most important subject for human 
consideration — the law of social evolution as a 
whole. 

My point is that Thomas Paine was the discov- 
erer of that law in society, politics and government ; 
and that his life and career were devoted to thus 
applying that law in his day and generation as a 
new basis of the future evolution, welfare and 
progress of all peoples and nations. If this is true, 
he stands among the very great, if not the greatest 
discoverers, and inventors of the human race. 
This sociology is the newest, that is, the last of the 
five greater sciences, to wit : Astronomy, Physics, 
Chemistry, Biology, and now Sociology. Each of 
these sciences grow out of each other and all are 
thus combined as one grand pedestal of the human 
race itself. That means that the human future is 
determined by the correlation and evolution of all 
of the changes which are our existence or "world." 
This law was discovered first in the material 
sciences — astronomy, physics, and chemistry; then 
in biology, that is the realm of living things — pro- 
tists, microbes, plants, then in the lower animals, and 
then in man the highest ; and then in the societies of 
mankind. There it is first found as a conscious evo- 
lution of social cooperation and purposeful design to 
attain beneficent ends. Such a design for such 
ends is the evolutional "telesis," or end sought, 
under all natural law which had to be discovered 
and applied in society, politics, and government to 
secure human welfare and progress. That law, 
and that only, determines what we are, where we 
are and whither going, and thus solves the human 
future and places it within human control. If 
Paine was the real leader in that discovery he 
stands by the side of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, 
present to describe. 

Comte, Spencer and Ward, and the beneficent re- 
sults and consequent glory of this discovery, and its 
discoverer, are beyond the words of any mind at 

Will this discovery of Paine's become under- 

18 



stood, and recognized to be his? If so, then at 
the next centenary audiences of thousands, instead 
of hundreds, will gather throughout the civilized 
world to recognize the mightiness of a debt they 
hitherto have had no idea that they owed. That 
law has been stated by August Comte, Herbert 
Spencer, and our own Lester F. Ward, as the law of 
integration, differentiation and convergence com- 
mon to all forms of association. Ward is now 
president of the American Sociological Society and 
professor of sociology in Brown University. That 
is the man who is now telling us these social truths ; 
and we are not fitted to discuss these questions un- 
less we know what the verdict of this new science 
is upon them. 

Mr. Wakeman continued, speaking of cooperative 
and convergent integration, individuation. He 
alluded to "Thoughts on Defensive Warfare," pub- 
lished by Paine in the Pennsylvania Magazine in 
July, 1775. It is a "most thoughtful essay" and is in- 
cluded in Conway's writings of Paine. "Friends, 
all of you read it" as the best answer to Tolstoi and 
the non-combative Anarchists. Then followed 
his "Serious Thought," then "Common Sense," then 
"Rights of Man," and in all of them the develop- 
ment of this social law is followed as the base of 
our Republic. The American colonies were told 
they must integrate into a confederation, each for 
all and all for each. 

He was also the pioneer worker for universal 
peace, the abolition of war. As to the nations then 
debating the attempts to relieve the world of war, 
Paine said No, you must first adopt this democratic 
federal republic. Establish republics, then peoples 
can be confederated into a federal whole, and then 
that final whole can abolish war in the progress of 
humanity. That was his theory, but it has had an 
imperial setback and it is now therefore practically 
adjourned until republics take the place of empires 
and monarchies. Paine designed to have this proc- 
ess begun by a "Maritime compact" formed by re- 
publics. 

19 



SPEECH OF MR. HUBBARD. 

After Prof. Wakeman's lengthy address had 
closed, he introduced the star from East Aurora, or 
more properly perhaps not a star at all, but the 
Aurora Borealis. To those who do not understand 
the reference, the next and last speaker of the day 
was Mr. Elbert Hubbard. His speech was likewise 
a long one, and jocular as well, holding the closest 
attention of the audience. This, like the others, 
must be condensed, the allotted space in The 
Truth Seeker being already overrun. He said : 

Not long ago I was reading a book by Maurice 
Maeterlinck, entitled the "Life of the Bee," and in 
that book I came across this proposition : That a 
bee taken away from its hive is lost and can never 
get back ; a bee alone makes no honey ; a bee alone 
has no intelligence, but a hive of bees has a great 
and a magnificent intelligence ; a hive of bees knows 
things that no man will ever know. A hive is very 
close to some of the great secrets of the infinite. A 
man alone has no intelligence; a man separated 
from his kind is lost and undone ; after a very few 
hours of absolute separation, reason reels and the 
mind totters. All of our actions in life have other 
men in mind. The man who says go to, I will suc- 
ceed, does not succeed. We succeed only as we 
work with other people, and the badge of sanity is 
the ability to co-operate with other people. When 
you are unable to co-operate with other people, there 
is one of two places where they will send you, 
either to Matteawan or to Sing Sing. There is no 
reason for sending a man to either place excepting 
through his inability to work with other people. 

Not long ago I visited the state hospital at Utica. 
I telegraphed my friend there, the superintendent, 
that I was coming to see him, When I got off the 
train a man came up to me and asked, Is this Mr. 
Hubbard? and he said, I was sent up from the 
hospital to meet you. I thought he was the doctor, 
he had a professional look and he looked a little 
like Dr. Slicer (laughter), and I am always im- 

20 



pressed when I meet great men and I did not know 
what to say to this man, and so the joke came in as 
it always does on cases of that kind. I said, From 
the hospital? Yes. You are not insane, are you? 
Not all the time. He said you know insane people 
are not insane all the time any more than sane peo- 
ple are sane all the time. Then we got into the car- 
riage waiting there. He said, This man is one of 
our patients, he is all right. And in the carriage 
he explained to me this : We never contradict any- 
body ; we try to use the remnant of sanity which he 
possesses, and if he can do anything for anybody 
else he is on his way to recovery. I said, You do 
not talk like an insane man to me, what is your 
trouble? He said religion. He said, What is 
yours ? I then saw he was concerned about me. I 
said, I want to do away with all of the doctors, 
lawyers and preachers. Well, he said, I think you 
are in for life (laughter). 

And that evening there I spoke to eight hundred 
of these insane people, so called. But there they 
do not call them insane people nor use the word 
asylum, and I am glad they have struck that word 
out. It was a Quakeress who struck from the Eng- 
lish records the madhouse. She said, They are not 
mad, they need our love, our care, our considera- 
tion, aye a woman. 

And I spoke there that night to these sick people, 
and I said, What shall I say to them ? I never talk- 
ed to insane people. He said, You do not need to 
talk insanely, give them the best you have got and 
you will find they have got something in common 
with you. I had talked about half an hour when an 
old lady arose and said, "I cannot, my God, I can- 
not stand this foolishness any longer!" and she 
walked out. The doctor said to me afterward this 
was the first sign of returning sanity (laughter). 

Now, the great change that has come about con- 
cerning sick people and orthodox people traces itself 
back to the Quakers, a word given to them in con- 
tempt; I like the word "Friend" better. Thomas 
Paine was a Friend ; his religion was friendship, and 



I do not know a better religion than that. He did 
not make a profession of friendship. He did not 
want his views made exempt from taxation because 
he was a Friend. He did not go in the friendship 
business; he did i.\ot go to a college to learn the 
•divine way of friendship; no, because you will 
never find friendship in college any more than you 
will find God in a divinity school or in church. If 
you want to find God in a church, says George 
Bernard Shaw, you must call in when the priest is 
not there. Thomas Paine's mother was a Quaker- 
ess, and one of the distinguishing features of the 
Quakers is this: They believe that God speaks to 
women just the same as to men, whereas the priests 
who go into the business of divinity believe tfiat God 
is masculine. There are no women angels. God 
is a bachelor and his stenographer, Gabriel, is a 
bachelor. Paul was a bachelor, a confirmed 
bachelor, and I imagine he was confirmed by a 
woman. I was delighted that our sincere friend 
here (Dr. Slicer) made some reference to women's 
hats. If you read the inscription on one side of that 
monument, Thomas Paine there speaks of the 
gratitude of man and woman. I love him for this ; 
I love him for the ideas of equality that he express- 
es, not only the equality of men, but the equality of 
men and women. 

Thomas Paine made the mistake of living too long 
and dying in a peaceful way. If you are going to 
live in history, you must not live too long. A year 
ago this month I rode from Torrington, Connecti- 
cut, to Litchfield, a distance of sixteen miles. I 
was riding with a friend from one town to the other 
and noticed much laurel en route, and my friend 
explained it was because John Brown was born at 
Torrington and Henry Ward Beecher was born at 
Litchfield, and Nature commemorated those events 
with a profusion of laurel aroundabout. John 
Brown died on the scaffold in West Virginia sur- 
rounded by thousands of troops, while Paine died 
peacefully. If you want laurels when dead you 
must meet a tragic death. 



22 



This closed the speaking for this year and the 
chairman adjourned the next similar glorification 
outing to one hundred years hence, at the same time 
announcing that not one of us will be there. The 
monument was appropriately decorated for this oc- 
casion, as it will also be for the next centennial 
memorial. At that time it may be that the clergy- 
man present will take for his subject the words of 
Paine, "I have as little superstition in me as any 
man living." 




23 



HENRY ROWLEYS 

THOMAS PAINE ADDRESS 



Delivered at tlie Centenary Celebration held by tbe 

Brooklyn Philosophical Association 

on Sunday, May 30 

Whilst it is pleasant to contemplate the high 
esteem in which Thomas Paine is held by many 
persons throughout the world, it is sad to relate 
that there are still some who persist in slandering 
him. Is it not strange that a man who had render- 
ed such signal services to mankind should be denied 
simple justice? Is it not amazing that men who 
have every opportunity of knowledge should re- 
peat silly stories, invented by malignant foes, as 
though they were verified statements? Even the 
ex-president of the United States has shown the 
grossest ignorance of Paine and the principles he 
advocated. He says that Paine was a "filthy little 
Atheist" — a trinity of falsehoods. The testimony 
of men who were intimates of Paine proves that 
he was careful of his person ; a man of clean habits. 
He wa5 five feet ten inches high — not very little — 
and he was not an Atheist. 

Paine asserts : "Religion has two principal 
enemies : Fanaticism and Infidelity, or that which is 
called Atheism. The first requires to be combated 
by reason and morality, the other by natural phi- 
losophy." * * * "We profess and we proclaim 
in peace, the pure, unmixed, comfortable and ra- 
tional belief of a God as manifested to us in the 
universe." 

In the face of such an explicit statement, it is 
beyond belief that any fair-minded person can 
charge Paine with being an Atheist. I am not de- 
fending or attacking these views: I merely state 
the facts as an .answer to the charge. 

24 



Paine was of the Quaker persuasion — a sect 
which does not trouble itself about theology; in fact, 
it utterly rejects the clerical and sacramental system 
in every form and it substitutes the "inner light" 
for the principle of authority. Have the opponents 
of Paine ever thought of the long list of distin- 
guished persons — a list strikingly disproportionate 
to their numbers — who came forth from their 
ranks? Time does not permit of a lengthly enum- 
eration: I just recall two illustrious physicists, 
Dalton and Young; and two philanthropists, Clark- 
son and Elizabeth Fry. Then think of the Deists. 
Under this head would properly come all the 
Unitarians — a comparatively small body, but its 
members always characterized by great intelligence, 
lofty morality, and a genuine devotion to the cause 
of religious liberity. 

Dr. Priestley, who takes a foremost place amongst 
scientists, wrote an exhaustive treatise on the "Cor- 
ruptions of Christianity" in which he shows that 
every dogma of orthodox Christianity was false 
doctrine. A Unitarian is chaplain of the United 
States Senate, the late president of Harvard and 
President Taft are Unitarians — all reject orthodoxy 
and stand theologically where Paine stood. Search 
your histories and you will find that the intellectual 
and moral forces of the world have been supplied 
by men of heterodox opinions. It is too late to 
judge a man by his biblical opinion: if the clergy 
were so tested half of them would be cast out of the 
church. There is a truer standard — that is, useful- 
ness ! 

Until Paine's time the Bible was practically a 
closed book to the masses, and few, if any, had given 
any study to the principles of government. Educa- 
tion and government were in the hands of a few : 
the king owned the bodies and the priests controlled 
the minds. The people received the "word" and the 
government the taxes. "Altar" and "throne" were 
in league to filch from the people. Paine's books 
were an illumination, and they sold by the hundreds 
of thousands. Some critics say that his language 

25 



was violent, that he was deficient in historical sense, 
and that he could not distinguish between legendary 
and mythical narratives, but no one has ever ac- 
cused him of hiding his meaning in verbosity or 
dodging the issue by quibbling over niceties. He 
goes straight to the point. 

The secret of the success of Paine's books lies 
in their simplicity. His sentences are clear and 
concise and his arguments are closely knitted to- 
gether. "He who runs may read." A problem is 
stated and solved in a sentence. Had he written 
learned treatises on Government and Religion he 
might have displayed his erudition, but never reach- 
ed the heart and brain of his fellow man. When he 
says that "the thirst for absolute power is the 
natural disease of monarchy" he sums up in a sen- 
tence, comprehensible to the ordinary mind, the 
curse of kingcraft; and the remark that "the nearer 
any government approaches to a republic, the less 
business there is for a king," is abundantly proved 
by the experience of America and England. 

I cannot too strongly urge upon you the study of 
the "Rights of Man." There are parts of it which 
"have only a historical interest, but the main theme 
deals with fundamental principles of government; 
the natural rights of man and their relationship to 
civil rights. It will be of service to our Socialistic 
friends when they are required to adjust individual 
sovereignty with governmental powers and respon- 
sibility. Paine was a strong individualist, but he 
recognized the necessity of government which should 
be the creation of a free people, and that its exist- 
ence should be continued only as long as it secures 
the rights of all the members of society. Govern- 
ment, in its true character, is the servant of society. 
Society has the right to establish any form of gov- 
ernment it thinks best suited to the exigencies of 
the people, provided it be not hereditary. Man has 
no property in man, neither has one age the right 
to fasten its system of government upon any other 
age. . Public affairs are to be managed by the living, 
not the dead. 

26 



Let me say a word or two about the "Age of 
Reason." It was the first criticism of the Bible 
I read, and I recall today the profound impression 
it made upon my mind. The young Methodist 
ministers who expounded the "word" to the devout 
in our village availed themselves of every oppor- 
tunity to slay the enemies of the Lord, the chief 
of which were Voltaire and Paine. In my youth- 
ful ignorance, I believed that Paine was an emis- 
sary of Satan, and whenever I heard his name I 
could see his horns and hear the whisk of his tail. 
I read the "Age of Reason" clandestinely but thor- 
oughly. I saw clearly that the Bible was not what 
the Protestant church claimed it to be. It was not 
a divine book but a human book. Instead of a mes- 
sage from heaven it was a collection of ancient 
myths edited by pious ecclesiastics who were more 
anxious to find an authoritative basis for their 
dogmas than to tell the simple truth regarding its 
origin and character. What was the real purpose 
of Paine in writing this book? I do not think it is 
difficult to find an answer if we diligently look for 
the facts. Paine had a real, genuine purpose in 
everything he did. Above all things he was in 
earnest. The character of his works shows that 
he was a profound thinker engaged in serious work. 
He had a reverent mind. The stories of the doings 
of Jehovah filled him with horror. Could it be pos- 
sible that the Creator of the Universe would issue 
orders to "slay both man and woman, infant 
and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass"r 
(i Sam. xv, 3.) The "Age of Reason" was the 
protest of a highly moral man against the doings of 
a deeply immoral god. "All our ideas of the justice 
and goodness of God give the lie to the book that 
ascribes cruelty and injustice to God: I therefore 
reject the Bible as unworthy of credit." It. was to 
save the character of God that Paine wrote. The 
Bible does hot describe a God of justice and good- 
ness, but a devil. . 

Paine claims that there are no mysteries in re- 
ligion. It imposes duties, which are, "doing justice,. 

27 



loving mercy and endeavoring to make our fellow 
creatures happy." When, however, men have in- 
vented religions which cannot be defended on ra- 
tional grounds, they have always tried to bar 
questionings, inquiries, and investigations. 

By the help of such words as "mystery" and 
"miracle" they succeeded in doing this. Paine says 
the word "mystery" seemed to bewilder the mind 
and the word "miracle" to puzzle the senses. The 
one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain. In 
the same category he places prophecy. Mystery 
and miracle took charge of the past and the present, 
prophecy took charge of the future and rounded the 
tenses of faith. The peculiarity of prophetic utter- 
ances lies in their looseness and obscurity, and so 
'"equivocal that they will fit any circumstance which 
might afterwards happen." Paine could not be- 
lieve that the "Almighty" would deal so jestingly 
with mankind. The "Examination of the Prophe- 
cies" will fully repay your thoughtful reading. 

You must have noticed the numerous references 
to dreams and visions made in the Old and New 
Testaments. Such a circumstance was not likely 
to elude the diligence of Paine, so he wrote "An 
Essay on Dream." Many people believe that there 
is some hidden meaning in dreams — instead of look- 
ing for their cause, they try to read into them some 
strange and fantastic features. Men and women 
visit necromancers for the purpose of having their 
dreams interpreted. Impostors are always lying in 
wait for the gullible. Dreams and visions are close- 
ly allied, although they arise from different causes. 
Generally speaking, the cause is physiological in 
both cases. Dreams are caused by eating too much, 
visions are caused by not eating enough. They 
mean nothing but physical disorder. Paine does 
not examine this phase of the subject, but confines 
himself to the investigation of the threefold facul- 
ties of the mind, viz. : Imagination, Judgment, and 
Memory. His remarks are very original and sug- 
gestive. He shows that as no importance can be 
attached to dreams, it is absurd to make them the 

28 



foundation of a religion. An old man had the most 
astounding dream — "and behold the Angel of the 
Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream saying 'Joseph, 
thou son of David, fear not thou to take unto thee 
Mary, thy wife, for that which is conceived in her 
is of the Holy Ghost/ " (Matt, i, 20.) 

Peter fell into a trance and saw a vision which 
convinced him that his knowledge of eatables was 
very imperfect. (Acts x, 11.) 

The writer of the thirty- fourth chapter of Ec- 
clesiasticus gives the best summary of dreams and 
dreamers: "The hopes of a man void of under- 
standing are vain and false; and dreams lift up 
fools. Whoso regardeth dreams is like him that 
catcheth at a shadow and followeth after the wind." 

All these speculations are of interest, but they 
are of secondary importance to Paine's work in the 
direction of human liberty. Had he not written 
the "Age of Reason" and his minor criticisms on 
the Bible, Paine would, no doubt, be amongst the 
"respectables" but his work would have been in- 
complete. Admitting, however, that there may be 
room for differences of opinion upon the value of 
his religious essays, is there any reason for with- 
holding our admiration and gratitude for the serv- 
ices he rendered in the cause of American inde- 
pendence? Pamphleteer, soldier, statesman, 
chronicler — tireless worker! He not only urged 
separation but sustained the country in its battle 
for independence. Toryism was rampant in New 
York city long after the signing of the Declaration 
of Independence, and it had to be won over to the 
cause of America. The early numbers of the 
"Crisis" show the true state of public feeling. There 
was a gallant army doing wonders in the field, but 
it was necessary to support it materially and moral- 
ly. When we consider that Paine, for several 
years, was a private citizen, it is almost incredible 
that he should have had at his command such an 
arsenal of facts. Any one who thinks he was a 
generalizer should consult the "Crisis," particularly 
number ten. His position was impregnable. He 

29 



was not satisfied with separation and the establish- 
ment of a new kingdom ; he was striving for a Re- 
public based upon the Rights of Man. 

I consider it a pleasure to speak the praises of 
men and women who have given their lives to the 
cause of liberty, and I consider it a sacred duty to 
rescue the name of Thomas Paine from the ob- 
loquy and shame which have been heaped upon it by 
men who are, to-day, the beneficiaries of his unsel- 
fish devotion and intelligent labors. 




Paine's monument* 

This curious picture of the Paine Monument was 
printed in Gilbert Vale's "Beacon" about seventy years 
ago, and is reproduced in his Life of Paine. 

30 



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